few places on a wide world? Is there no law among the light-skinned people? We have lived here, on the world you call Kansas, for many generations. We were once of Earth, as were your grandfathers."

"All humans were once of Earth," Hartford said.

"If we are as much human as you," she said, "why does your Nef call us Hominids? Is that a name to give a brother?"

"It is better than Stinker," Hartford suggested.

"Hai! I tell you, Lee-san why you must re-name us. It is because men do not kill men until they give their brother-enemy a monstrous name. Why do you wish to kill us all?" she asked.

"I'm not a member of the Brotherhood," Hartford said. "I'm only a man who was born on Axenite. That means, until your beast and my jeep collided, tearing my safety-suit, I was an animal uncontaminated by microscopic life. These microscopic animals, Takeko, are deadly to an Axenite."

"You are not dead, though," Takeko suggested. "Ne?"

"I've been breathing contaminated air for twelve hours," Hartford said. "It's true. I cannot understand why I have no fever, no malaise, no symptoms of pneumonia."

Takeko giggled. "Forgive me," she said. "Kinodoku semban; but you seem to be sorry to be alive." She was silent for a moment, listening. She pointed north. "My father will appear with our giraffu soon," she said. "I can hear them."

Takeko's father rode up a moment later, an unbent man of seventy. He sat astride his camelopard, a comic quadruped little better designed as a beast of burden than an ostrich, with as much dignity as though his steed were an Arabian stallion. His name, Takeko said, was Kiwa-san. The old man bowed from his saddle when his daughter introduced Hartford.

At Kiwa-san's command the two giraffu he'd brought along on lead-reins spread their legs to bring their down-sloping backs a scant four feet from the ground. The saddles, with dangling, boot-like gambadoes in place of ordinary stirrups, seemed inaccessible to Hartford. "Watch me," Takeko told him. She took a short run up behind her giraffu and, with a movement like a leap-frog hurdle, flipped herself up into the saddle.

Hartford stepped back, ran and leaped. He succeeded only in banging his shoes into the right sifle-joint of his mount and in flipping himself to the ground. In 

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